Medical
Marijuana

Where is the compassion?

RIP: Died in year 2000 at age 50

Peter
McWilliams

HIV / AIDS patient charged with conspiracy to cultivate
marijuana

Died due to medical complications after being stripped
of his state-endowed right to medical marijuana

Peter McWilliams was a best-selling writer and publisher
of many self-help and other books. Among his best-known
works are How to Survive the Loss of a Love, Life 101 and
Ain't Nobody's Business if You do. Having repeatedly pulled
his life together after hardships and bouts with depression,
he wrote books to help others rise above adversity.

In March1996, Peter was diagnosed with AIDS and cancer.
Using the chemotherapy and radiation to fight the cancer and
combination therapy for the AIDS, he found that the cure was
almost worse than the disease. Nauseous, unable to eat and
bereft of his appetite, Peter began to waste away at his
scenic hilltop home overlooking the Los Angeles basin.
Fortunately, he found that using cannabis allowed him to
keep down the drugs and fight the diseases.

Peter told himself that if he lived, he would devote his
life to getting medical marijuana to all the sick people who
needed it. He made a remarkable recovery and was once again
his positive, vivacious, productive self. Even better,
California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized
cultivation and use of medical marijuana. Peter became an
outspoken advocate, and he commissioned Todd McCormick, an
activist and patient, to write a book on cultivating
different strains of medical marijuana for different
illnesses. Todd began his research by doing his own grow,
which was soon raided by the DEA.

Peter, Todd and others were charged with a marijuana
conspiracy. Since federal law does not allow medical
marijuana, the judge and prosecutors forced them to stop
using medical marijuana as terms of their release. Random
drug testing and the prospect that his mother's and
brother's homes would be forfeited if marijuana was detected
in his urine assured Peter's compliance with these terms.
With no legal defense left and facing a 10-year sentence,
McWilliams pled to a lesser charge and got five years. While
awaiting sentencing, Peter choked to death on his own vomit.
For this AIDS patient, the government's denial of the
medicine that controlled his nausea became a death
sentence.